


It's Always Sunny in the Dragon Pit

by Rainfallen



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Crack, Dragons, F/M, Gen, Multi, Other, direwolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-14
Updated: 2013-12-14
Packaged: 2018-01-04 15:42:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1082796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainfallen/pseuds/Rainfallen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crack!fic.   "Superhero" shenanigans meet Stark domestic drama in an untold parallel universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Always Sunny in the Dragon Pit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leapylion3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leapylion3/gifts).



> Written for [leapylion3](http://leapylion3.livejournal.com/profile) in the winter 2013 [Game of Thrones Exchange](http://got-exchange.livejournal.com/97356.html) in absolute and shameless disregard for her actual prompts.

  
The call came in five minutes after they sat down to dinner in their private dining area, deep in the complex.  
  
Arya sat hunched over her loaded plate, stabbing mismatched pease onto her fork with a vigor and ferocity that might have alarmed any other company, but her siblings and cousin rarely concerned themselves with her eccentricities these days. Jon slouched on the industrial bench beside her, one hand on his utensil and the other thumbing through one of Bran's latest strategies, while Alys and Sansa sat across from them, straight and slender. The comfortable silence between them was broken only by the tink of metal on metal and the low hum of the complex around them, machinery and conversations blurring through the maze of walls and doors and corridors leading to their group's quarters.  
  
Of course the silence wouldn't last; it never did.  
  
"Rickon's late again," Alys remarked with a casualness that bordered on apathy. Arya was not fooled; she knew an instigative remark when she heard one. It just so happened that she wasn't the one making it this time.  
  
Arya felt Jon straighten and then go still beside her; no doubt Sansa's emotions had spiked with worry. Arya wasn't the empath and even  _she_  could sense that.  
  
Before the stiffness of anxiety could settle in Sansa's shoulders or the inevitable shroud of cold could envelop the table, Arya pointed her fork at Alys. "Don't start on Rickon. He's sixteen years old and under arseloads of pressure. He can have dinner wherever he likes."  
  
Alys shot her an amused look over her mug of beer. "Well, I suppose he'll be having Shaggy and Osha with him, wherever he's gotten off to. No cause to worry  _there_." Her tone was light and jovial, but the sarcasm was apparent. Alys was more sarcastic even than Arya on most days. It was one of the things Arya liked best about her, but right now it was not helping. Osha helped anchor Rickon's powers and keep him calm, but she was not renowned for her even temperament. If she lost her composure, so would Rickon, and as went Rickon, so went Shaggy. There was a reason Bran and Sansa insisted on accompanying the trio whenever they had planned excursions.  
  
"I'm sure they've just snagged some dinner from the mess—" Jon attempted to put in, but Alys shook her head.  
  
"Not with the wolf there. You know what happened last time."  
  
It seemed nothing would do but Alys set Sansa off, and the rest of them would have to suffer for it. It wasn't that Alys and Sansa didn't get on well—they did, almost frighteningly so for two such contrasting personalities—but Alys hadn't been with them when Father and Lady were killed. Sansa hadn't warged since that day, and neither had she been able to use the full range of her thermoclimatic abilities; it was always chills in the room or ice slicks under a criminal's feet or unexpected explosions of snow in the room when someone upset her, and never a burst of flame or the aromatic warmth of citrus and chocolate that had emanated from her before. Alys didn't seem to understand that what Arya or Robb might take for lighthearted teasing would send Sansa into a fit of worry that would have her hovering in a cloud of frost and bossing them around for weeks.  
  
Having one sibling as her actual supervisor was bad enough. Arya didn't need two, and neither did Rickon.  
  
Sansa drew an audible breath and had just begun to say, "Perhaps I should—" when the telltale crackle-buzz of the comms opening cut across her words. Almost as one, the four of them tensed as Gendry's voice filled the room. "Sorry to interrupt you lot there," he said, not sounding sorry at all, "But we've got a bit of—ah—a situation."  
  
"Go ahead," Sansa told him, tapping a fingernail softly against the steel rim of her tumbler. Every time her finger connected with the metal, a tiny shard of ice bloomed in the water on the other side. Arya didn't think Sansa even noticed she was doing it. That was never a good sign.  
  
"Your brother and his wolf are in the dragon pit."  
  
Sansa's goblet froze over completely and Arya had to shake her hand hard to loosen the freezing metal of her fork from where it had stuck to her skin. Arya's litany of internal curses was almost poetic.  
  
"What's the situation, then?" Jon asked, doubtless acutely conscious of the growing tension around them.  
  
"The whole thing's locked down, that's the situation. The Queen Keeper is cross-continent on assignment with Drogon of course. Quen's up there on the platform trying to calm down the other two, but you know he's not half the handler she is. Osha's locked out, so she's yelling at Rickon and I think the gate's on fire, which is why the isolation protocols have kicked in and no one can get through and—why don't you just come have a look for yourselves?"  
  
"Where's Bran?" Arya asked.  
  
"He's been down here by the pit of course, but he and Rickon had a row earlier and he's not been much help so he headed back up to Command to check something and meet you." There was a pause, and then the unmistakable shriek of an angry dragon crackling much louder across the comms than was comfortable. "Look, just come shoot him with a dart or taser or something," Gendry said hurriedly. "That'll go through the barrier just fine."  
  
Arya's muttered " _Oh fuck_ you _, you inconsiderate tech wanker_ " was not faint enough to escape the audio sensors.  
  
"Unfortunately, no time for that right now," Gendry said, suddenly cheerful and—as ever—completely indifferent to the fact that his uncle monitored the comm channels. "But you know that offer is always on the table when disaster isn't imminent."  
  
"Not bloody likely, you hulking beast. I'd rather bed a—"  
  
Alys scratched her nails hard over the input sensor on the wall behind her as she stood, and the link went dead in the middle of Gendry's aborted yelp and the faint feedback of the screeching scrape.  
  
"Thanks," Jon told her wryly. "I don't need to listen to those two right at this moment." He and Alys shared a commiserative look that neither of them had any right to, considering what they inflicted on everyone else.  
  
Arya strapped on her belt kit, slung the strap of weaponry across her shoulder, and ignored them.  
  
"Let's go," Sansa called, already out the door and oblivious to anything other than their brother's possible danger. Arya jogged to catch up, near as anxious as Sansa to get to the pit now. As different as she and Sansa might be, this was one thing they shared since Father. Someone in their family being in danger was almost inevitable on any given day—their jobs and abilities weren't exactly the most peaceful, and they were nothing if not high-profile even that aside. Someone in their family being in danger alone, somewhere they couldn't reach or help—that was another matter entirely, and a situation neither she nor Sansa could bear. Arya might just be a simple born warg with no outside abilities like the rest of her family all seemed to have, but no one underestimated the strength and efficiency of a simple well-placed blade or tranq shot, and there was none with better aim than she ("Cat," they called her, as much for her lightness of foot and seeming inability to miss whatever she aimed to hit as for her ability to warg cats in addition to her family's traditional wolves).  
  
  
  
~~~  
  
  
  
Command was calmer than she expected. Few enough people were in their stations, granted, having abandoned them to peer down through the convex windows into the dragon pit below and murmur astonished remarks to one another, but no one was screaming or panicked. She could feel the air around Sansa lose some of its chill in response to the atmosphere, and was thankful for it.  
  
A glance down at the pit showed the two dragons perched on the ground rather than airborne, which she supposed was a blessing. The twin black hulks of Rickon and Shaggy paced near them, but everyone appeared intact and relatively unscathed, at least from this vantage point and through the veil of smoke lingering over the pit. The whole lot were on the far side of the pit from the main gate, on the other side of the low rise of earth and small copse of now-scorched trees in the center—far out of range of any shot she could get off from the platform.  _Damn it._  
  
She glanced around to find Bran and Jojen sitting at the end of their table with Summer curled protectively around their feet. Their shaggy heads were bent close together over a map of the complex as they traced the ley lines in disturbing synchronicity. Sansa huffed softly in impatience and walked straight past them to take the lift down to the ground level. Arya was tempted to follow immediately, but someone had to sort out what Team Divination was plotting—and, little brother or not, Bran was her superior in official business (however often she followed his instructions, though, was at her own discretion, and damn the rules that said otherwise).  
  
Arya scowled at the two as they sat mumbling nonsensical nothings at one another over the map; Bran and Jojen spoke so quickly and cryptically that she'd long since given up trying to decipher their conversations. After a moment, she interjected: "Bran, he's ten feet tall and covered in fur and I can literally hear him howling from right where I stand. What is there to divine?"  
  
Bran glanced up and gave her an infuriatingly patient look. "Give us a sec. We're just trying to see if there's energy in the region of the pit that's provoking him particularly."  
  
"Oh, like maybe… dragons? Huge, fiery, dragon-shaped energy balls?" Alys asked over Arya's shoulder.  
  
"You've been spending too much time with Arya," Bran told her. "There's something there but I can't quite—let's just—"  
  
"Go back down and try a different sight layer," Jojen finished for him, and Bran nodded.  
  
Arya stepped back from the table and Bran whooshed past her in his auto chair with Summer loping beside him. Jojen was hot on his heels in a flurry of half-ethereal wings and a waft of an ancient woodsy scent that seemed to settle Arya's bones despite her anxiety. She hurried after them, Jon and Alys close on either side of her.  
  
  
What chaos had been lacking in Command was out in force in the pit.  
  
All the handling staff was gathered on the platform at the edge of the pit. Quentyn Martell was at their center, shaking his head at the sight before him and no doubt well aware of the hell he'd catch when the Queen handler returned. He was already getting plenty at the moment—Osha stood beside him, her hair and arms waving wildly as she shouted at him, her voice lost in the cacophony. The gate was indeed on fire, as were several patches of the wall and more than one rafter, though the automatic flame dousers were churning away dutifully, spraying flame-retardant foam which would harden as it cooled to fill in any holes that burned through. Dozens of people were rushing about, shouting suggestions and jumping back in comical unison whenever a particularly ear-piercing growl or roar sounded from the floor of the pit. Jon's hapless healer friend Sam was tutting over two handlers with bloody arms, and—worst of all—someone had appeared to have told Robb.  
  
No matter how many times she saw it, Robb's skin-tight suit never failed to amuse her, black and gold and red to commemorate the joint ruling families and his role as their oh-so-virtuous champion. Today, however, Arya was in no mood to be amused. Before she could approach her brother and demand to know why he was here and why he'd apparently wasted the energy to come back for this, Jon caught him by the arm and pulled him toward the end of the gate which had been most successfully doused. Robb would hear it from her later, when everyone was safe. He was supposed to be halfway across the continent assisting Mother with some diplomatic something-or-other, not teleporting back here at a whim and adding panic to the air for no good reason. Poor Jon was already pale under the weight of it.  
  
She growled in frustration and stomped toward the opposite end of the gate to see what she could see.  
  
"Oh good, I see Robb got my message," said a voice somewhere behind her and over her head.  _Of course. Who else?_  
  
"When this is over, I'm punching you in the face," she snarled, not bothering to slow or even turn, butting her shoulder up against the line of people pressed against the gate.  
  
"I'll find you a box later so you can give that a go," Gendry told her, his arm stretching out past her head from behind her to help clear a path through the throngs of people roving around the pit.  
  
Her patience at its limit, Arya didn't answer. There were bigger problems at hand, like the ever-increasing sound of growls and roars still coming from the floor of the pit and—  
  
" _Seven hells_ , how did Sansa get in the pit?" Arya shouted, pointing needlessly at her sister who, now the picture of serenity, was almost a stone's throw into the pit, moving ever so slowly and gracefully across the upturned and charred earth toward the wild creatures on the other side of the dome.  
  
Everyone seemed to freeze in place for a moment before bursting into a violent flurry of movement, the crowd of gathered people trying to press closer to the gat to see what Sansa was doing while the handlers threaded through them and attempted to push them back. Arya looked back to find Alys, only to see her shove herself into a control panel terminal alongside Gendry's infinitely more talented tech partner Ygritte, fingers instantly darting across the display screen in what Arya only hoped was an attempt to bring down the barrier.  
  
Arya could hear Robb bellowing and banging his shield against the gate somewhere off to her left with Jon saying something to him she couldn't understand, while Bran's uncharacteristically shrill voice demanded, "Where's the breech? Everyone get  _back_  from the gate, now where's the breach?" over and over until a particularly piercing shout from Alys and Ygritte's terminal caught his attention.  
  
The handlers had maneuvered most of the stray crowd members away from the gate itself, but Arya stayed where she was as Jon, more adept in Alys and Ygritte's complicated gestures than anyone else—and for good reason, that—pushed up beside Arya with Robb just behind him and thumped at the gate with his knuckles. "Here," he said. "They say the force shield is down right over the gate. Sansa must have just stepped through a hole before the dousers filled it--we just need to get over it."  
  
With the isolation protocols running, the gate couldn't be opened, but if the shield was down that would explain how Sansa was able to find a crack to squeeze through. Still, Arya couldn't see one anywhere, so scaling it seemed indeed the only option. It wasn't so  _very_  large: at twenty feet or so it was tall enough for the highest transports to pass through unhindered. After all, it was hardly the gate keeping the dragons inside—the energy barrier did that—but to ensure no one could just stumble inside if there was a breach in the barrier. It couldn't have been luck that Sansa found the one spot where both the physical and kinetic barriers were compromised.  _Well-played Sansa._ Stupid, _but well-played._  
  
"Where are the bloody training ropes, Quentyn?" Robb shouted from behind Jon.  
  
"Maybe we could—" Arya began, but then she was several feet in the air, almost before she realized she'd been lifted.  
  
"Ropes," Gendry snorted derisively beneath her, his hands firm on her hips as he perched her on his shoulder for a brief moment. "Up you go, then. Don't do anything stupid before we get over there."  
  
"I will set your pants on fire," Arya said, but her heart wasn't in it. Gendry crouched a little and then sprang up with the full force of his tremendous strength, launching her high into the air. She twisted midair as she arched up, up, and then back down, and when her hands connected with the top of the gate she pushed off it again, flipping gracefully right-side-up and landing on her feet in the pit. Gendry's preternatural strength came in handy enough sometimes, she granted internally, though she'd never tell  _him_  that. Jon hit the ground next to her a moment later, flailing and unsteady, and Gendry vaulted after him like the great show-off he was. Ten seconds later Robb tumbled over the top of the gate on a rope, and a soft buzzing flutter accompanied Jojen as he hovered beside them, holding Bran like a particularly rumpled princess in his arms. The display on the inside of the omni tool at her wrist told her only a scant two minutes had passed since Arya first noticed Sansa in the pit, but it felt like much longer.  
  
Those of them with weapons had them at the ready—Bran and Jojen needed no weapons but their brains, as Bran liked to remind Arya when he was feeling snotty—and they moved swiftly to the little rise over which Sansa had now disappeared.  
  
  
  
~~~  
  
  
Arya didn't know what she'd expected. Blood and torn scales and floating tufts of fur, maybe. And, true enough, there were plenty of those.  
  
But Sansa had her hand buried in the scruff at Shaggy's huge neck, her head thrown back and she was  _laughing_.  
  
"What," said Bran.  
  
Rickon, the only one of the Stark children—the only warg in the world of whom they knew—who could actually change his own skin to match his wolf's, bounded to Sansa's side on four paws, Shaggy's twin in size and appearance alike, and licked her free hand generously before wheeling off. His claws kicked up clods of blackened earth as he raced toward one of the dragons—Rhaegal, Arya thought—and  _leapt_ , catching the dragon's neck between his paws and tumbling to the ground. Rhaegal roared and thrashed his head and Arya's breath choked up her throat at the sight of the flames, but when the dragon tossed the boy-wolf off and buffeted him with his wings, he kept his claws inward and his breath contained.  
  
Beside Sansa, Shaggy  _whuffed_  out an excited sound and seemed to be quivering eagerly. "Oh go on," Sansa said, patting his shoulder firmly. He shot off as though he had been waiting for permission, snarling victoriously as he tackled Rhaegal just as Rickon pounced from the opposite side. The giant beasts scrabbled and yowled and stumbled in a knot of limbs and wings, hitting the ground in a mass of fur and fang and scales and ash. Viserion at last saw fit to join the tussle, roaring a lazy puff of flame in their general direction before batting ineffectually at a wolf's head with his pale wings.  
  
"What," sighed Arya.  
  
"They're just playing," Sansa said. "Just playing."  
  
"They almost burned down the pit enclosure," Jon said mildly, and Arya elbowed him in the stomach.  
  
Rickon howled in triumph as he wriggled and leapt his way fully atop Viserion, and the air sparkled with Sansa's warmth as she laughed. Gendry wrapped his big paw of a hand around Arya's shoulder, and she let him keep it there.  
  
They were three weeks in repairing the pit walls, and Rickon took a mighty scolding from the Queen handler upon her return that rivaled the one she gave Quentyn, but Arya thought it was rather worth it in the end.

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
>  
> 
> _Don't tell me direwolves and dragons won't be best buds, all right? I am not here for that kind of negativity._
> 
>  
> 
> For my own amusement, a summary of powers/designations (all Starks are wargs, but some Starks are not only wargs)  :
> 
>  **Alys:** Warg+No additional powers; tech and tactics  
>  **Arya:** Warg+No additional powers; infiltration and assassination  
>  **Bran:** Warg, Sight, Telepathy  
>  **Daenerys:** Animal empath and also queen  
>  **Gendry:** Super strength; Tech and Engineering  
>  **Jojen:** Winged Fey; Sight  
>  **Jon:** Warg, Empath  
>  **Osha:** Mild Pathokinesis  
>  **Quentyn:** Animal empath  
>  **Rickon:** Warg, Shifter  
>  **Robb:** Warg, Captain Westeros--with teleportation and a magic shield : >  
>  **Sam:** Wizard ofc--healing, light divination, light elemental control, etc.  
>  **Sansa:** Warg, Thermoclimatics/weather manipulation, particularly as related to temperature  
>  **Stannis:** Grumpy Iron Man (ha ha I am so punny) and also king  
>  **Ygritte:** Elementalist; Tech and Engineering
> 
>  
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](http://sergendry.tumblr.com) if you're so inclined.


End file.
